EverymanTri.com

Javier Gomez storms to victory to win 3rd ETU Triathlon European Championships in Eilat, Israel

Eilat, Israel (April 22 2012) - Spain's ed the run and left nothing to chance at the 2012 Eilat ETU Triathlon European Championships to take the European title for the third time in his career. Russia took silver and bronze with powerful performances by Alexander Bryukhankov and Ivan Vasiliev who just beat Tony Moulai (FRA) in a sprint to the line for third.
 
"It was a tough race with conditions in the heat and the wind," said Gomez. "The course was tough too, it was very complicated but I felt good the whole time and I kept pretty solid on the bike and I knew I had energy for the run. Although it wasn't a very fast run, it was the same conditions for everyone and I managed to push hard on the first lap and make a pretty good gap and then I just kept it. I felt tired but pretty happy."

Spirig sprints to win 3rd ETU Triathlon European Championships in Eilat, Israel

Eilat, Israel (April, 21 2012) - Nicola Spirig (SUI) and Ainhoa Murua (ESP) produced a thrilling sprint finish at the 2012 Eilat ETU Triathlon European Championships this weekend. Spirig outran Murua for the second straight week after the pair fought a similar sprint in Sydney just last week, with Spirig winning out again, this time for her third European Championship.  Defending champion Emmie Charayron (FRA) held her position throughout the race to take bronze.

Top 3 important training & racing tips to make you faster this summer

The 2012 season is in full swing!  Personally, I have yet to race a triathlon this year, but I’ve ran a 10k, off road duathlon, 4 mile obstacle course and a half marathon.  Next up, half marathon and a 4 mile run to round out April.

Most of us triathlete and endurance type of people are always tinkering with ways to train and race better.  The off-season is a great time to implement new ideas and dink and dunk with your training habits to get desired results, be it improved times or avoiding injuries during the season.

For you lucky readers of my weekly posts, I’ve applied 3 major renovations to my training and racing.

One month and counting to ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships

(Vancouver, Canada (April 19, 2012) - The countdown is on to the biggest event on the ITU Cross Triathlon calendar, the 2012 Shelby County ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships. Just one month until Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham, Alabama hosts the event on 19 May which also marks a landmark partnership with the XTERRA Southeast Championship.
 
Oak Mountain State Park, located in the southernmost part of the Appalachian Chain, boasts a trail praised by competitors as one of the most fun, fast, scenic and difficult with credit attributed to the work of Birmingham Urban Mountain Pedalers (BUMP) along with Alabama's DCNR State Park Division , Shelby County and the City of Pelham. BUMP has spent more than 100,000 hours in design and construction of new trails over the past 20 years.
 
Pelham is the second ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships following last year's successful inauguration in Extremadura, Spain and will this year be held in conjunction with the seventh-annual XTERRA Southeast Championship. Winners in Extremadura, Canadian Melanie McQuaid and South Africa's Conrad Stoltz, are preparing to defend their world title in 2012.

How to swim like an Olympian: Top 5 Master Swim Etiquette Tips for Triathletes

Joanna Zeiger is a former professional triathlete, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion. In other words, she's not only a crazy fast swimmer, but she's also spent countless hours in the swimming pool.

In this first video, JZ along with her training partner Brandon discuss and demonstrate the top five (DON'Ts ) of Master Swim Etiquette Tips. 

This is part of a new series of videos that JZ, Brandon and EverymanTRI.com are producing called Real Swimming for Triathletes that is an informative, instructional and entertaining look at swimming techniques specifically for triathletes.

Check it out the first video below:

Top Ten EMT lightning round questions with pro triathlete Greg Bennett

Greg Bennett has been racing traithlon since the age of 15. He's an Aussie who lives and trains much of the year in Boulder, Colorado and winters in Australia with his equally lovely and fast pro triathlete wife and Olympian: Laura.

Greg has won six world cup titles and the world's richest triathlon in 2007 by winning all 5 of the Life Time Fitness Grand Slam series events. We recently had the chance to ask Greg our Top Ten EMT lightning round questions as he and Laura rally support for the US Triathlon team in their quest for Olympic gold.

We think you'll enjoy the question and his answers, which BTW, are below:

1) Who's was your Childhood inspiration?

To be honest, I've never truly had any one inspiration. I guess I was brought up in such a way that I had to always find inspiration from within. I've always set goals, I've always planned and I've always wanted to experience as much as I can. I've used the sport of Triathlon as a way to test myself, to go beyond what Ive ever thought possible. The sport has been a great tool for getting all that I can out of my life.

Video of the day: Who says a triathlon bike doesn't handle turns well?

Check out this video as the triathlete on his bike demonstrates that not only can a tri bike handle the twisty roads, but it can descend faster than a car.

The videos description says:

"On a long ride through the gorgeous mountains of Mallorca's west coast we got to play a little bit with our GoPro Hero2 HD cam. The descent to the bay of Sa Calobra is without doubt one of the most stunning rides one can imagine - 680 m of elevation, countless turns and mostly good tarmac (except for a few twists) make for an incredible experience.
Actually we were pretty lucky to find only a couple of cyclists, cars and busses on the road, since it can get pretty jammed during the day, especially in spring.

The bike used was a normal Simplon Mr. T time trial/triathlon road bike with Xentis Squad 5.8 full-carbon clincher wheels and normal riding position (serious drop and forward shifted position, that is). A road bike with a more balanced position is probably even faster, but we're quite happy with the results."

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1,300 collegiate triathletes set to compete at Saturday's USA Triathlon Collegiate Nationals

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - With 11 combined men's and women's top-10 finishers returning from last year and a talented crop of newcomers in the field, Saturday's 2012 USA Triathlon Collegiate National Championship in Tuscaloosa, Ala., is expected to be one of the most competitive editions of the event in recent memory.

A field of nearly 1,300 collegiate triathletes will vie for individual and team national titles in the Olympic-distance championship event, which features a 1,500-meter swim, 40-kilometer bike and 10-kilometer run starting and finishing at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater. The women's race will start at 7:30 a.m. Central, followed by the men at 10:30 a.m.
 
New for 2012 is the mixed team relay, which will begin at 4 p.m. Each four-person team must consist of two females and two males who will complete a super-sprint triathlon before tagging their teammate. The first athlete will race a 275m swim, 6k bike and 1.6k run; the three remaining athletes will complete a 250m swim, 6k bike and 1.6k run.

Photo of the day: Boston Marathon winners celebrate with a kiss

Kenyan citizen and permanent resident of the United States Wesley Korir and Sharon Cherop celebrate their win today at the Boston Marathon with a kiss.

Korir won the race in a time of 2 hours, 12 minutes, 40 seconds, which was the second slowest race time since 1995...as temperatures soared into the low 80's.

Cherop, also from Kenya, won the race in 2:31:50 in a dramatic sprint down Boylston Street to the finishline beating second place finisher Jemima Jelagat Sumgong by 2 seconds.

A total of 22,426 runners braved the very hot condition today out of a total of 27,000 registered runners with as many as 4,300 entrants opting to take up the race organizers on their offer of a one year deferred entry due to the high temperatures.

Follow on twitter @everymantri or view latest videos on YouTube.

 

Is the wetsuit effect for real?

A few months ago, my niece called me and asked me to help her devise a science fair project. Research is my thing, but I am not very well versed in the nuances of 8th grade assignments. I asked Dr. Google for some ideas, but nothing seemed original or interesting, and if I wasn’t interested, there is no way my 14 year old niece would be interested. Then, in a flash of shear genius (if I don’t pat myself on the back, nobody will) I had an idea. How about formally testing the wetsuit effect?  You know, the notion that non-swimmers benefit more from a wetsuit than swimmers.

My niece is a swimmer, so she immediately embraced the proposal. The final plan was to get about 20 masters swimmers of varying abilities and have them swim 200 yards with a wetsuit and without a wetsuit. Her hypothesis was the faster swimmers would have less of a time difference than the less fast swimmers (how PC is that? I didn’t call them “slower” swimmers).

The pro triathlete Xterra couple that trains together...wins together

Rotorua, New Zealand (April 14, 2012) - International couple, Ben Allen (Australia) and his partner, Jacqui Slack (Great Britain), celebrated wins at the 10th annual XTERRA New Zealand Championship today.

It was perfect race conditions that greeted more than 2,000 participants as they descended on the Blue Lake, a crowd which included some of New Zealand’s best multisport athletes, all looking to take out the title, only to have their challenges thwarted by the overseas visitors.

It is Allen’s fourth win in a row on the XTERRA World Tour, having recently taken out wins at XTERRA Championships in Guam, Philippines and Saipan last month.

However, it was no easy win with New Zealand triathlon representative, Graham O’Grady (Kinloch), leading out of the 1km swim leg by 30 seconds with Allen, a former Australian Surf Life Saving Champion, hot on his heels.

O’Grady, a road specialist, found the going tough early on the ride and the off-road experts hit the front with Scott Thorne (Hamilton) and Allen tussling for position on the technical trails through the very scenic Redwood Forest.

Video of the Day: The most thrilling XTERRA finsih of the year

This is as close as it gets. Renate Bucher and Leslie Paterson sprint to the finish at the 2012 XTERRA West Championships in Las Vegas, with Bucher taking the win by  3/10th's of a second.

You can read the race story with full race results HERE.

Follow on twitter @everymantri or view latest videos on YouTube.

Stoltz and Bucher win the XTERRA West Championship

April 14, 2012 (Lake Las Vegas, Nevada) - Emotion and excitement ruled the day at the XTERRA West Championship in Lake Las Vegas, Nevada as XTERRA icon Conrad ‘the Caveman’ Stoltz rode a wave of adrenaline to victory in honor of his father Gert who passed away on Monday, while Renata Bucher somehow out-stretched the defending XTERRA World Champ Lesley Paterson at the tape in the closest women’s finish in the sports history.

"I thought about my Dad a lot, and Liezel, and our faith that has carried us through this,” said Stoltz, who pointed to the heavens as he crossed the finish line.  “This one is for my Dad. Tomorrow, we’ll go home for his funeral.”

Video Review: Is the 2012 Dodge Durango the perfect SUV for growing triathlete families?

The 2012 Dodge Durango Crew AWD is a full-sized SUV that competes with other large American SUVs like the Ford Explorer and the Chevy Traverse.

The newly redesigned Durango is based on the Jeep Grand Cherokee, but unlike the Jeep the Durango will seat 7 people. It can be had with both a V6 and of course Chrysler’s more powerful HEMI V8.

This week Dave reviews the 2012 Dodge Durango Crew AWD with V6 (from our sister blog TFLcar.com) to see if it is up to taking on the other big boys from GM and Ford and hauling a growing triathlete family.

Rasmus Henning repeats win at Challenge Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands

(April 14, 2012) - Rasmus Henning (DAN) has retained his title at today’s Challenge Fuerteventura with a convincing win 3:57:16 win while Britain’s Emma Kate Lidbury took out the women’s title in 4:32:41.

Henning was second out of the water behind fellow Dane, Rasmus Petreaus but by the 10km mark on the bike had taken the lead. By now Daniel Halksworth (GBR) had moved up into second and lost just 37 seconds to Henning’s fastest bike split of the day in 2:19:20.

Germany's Steffen Justus wins ITU World Triathlon Series in Sydney

(Sydney, Australia April 14, 2012) Germany's Steffen Justus broke through for the biggest win of his ITU career, in a men's ITU World Triathlon Series race that had twists and turns at every corner in Sydney on Saturday.
 
After a two-man bike breakaway coming into T2, Russia's Ivan Vasiliev dropped his breakaway partner James Elvery in the first few hundred metres and managed to stay out front until the second last run lap. It wasn't until the final 15 minutes that the trio of Justus, South Africa's Richard Murray and France's Laurent Vidal pulled ahead of the Russian. It set up a final lap showdown, but Justus didn't look back from passing Vasiliev. He rocketed to the front and stayed there, to claim his first ITU World Triathlon Series win and first major ITU title. He said the key had been making his move at the six-kilometre mark of the run.